Butterfly Effect
by Stellunas
Summary: The butterfly effect is when one small change ripples through history and changes everything. And what happened to the Zodiac that cause them to have insane powers and spirit animals. Big things change things, too. Such as the fact that Dipper and Mabel have a world saving older sister. Fun fact, she'd never been to Gravity Falls in her life. 2012 was insane.
1. Here's Your Spirit Animal

**Hello. I don't know what to say in the author's note. Why am I writing one, then? I don't know, feels like I should. Also, rating might change to a T, since I'm not sure how violent this is going to be. I hope you like the story.**

"Between the two of us, I'm not always the bad twin," Stan said while pointing to each of the aforementioned twins. Ten people were standing in a circle holding hands, and probably would've looked idiotic if it weren't for the blue glow that surrounded them.

After a couple of moments, Bill Cipher appeared, twirling the Mystery Shack's totem pole. The zodiac sucked in a collective breath, hoping that the gig wasn't up. Bill acted like he didn't notice them, and seemed like he was going to say something… but then he noticed them standing there.

"No!" he yelled, and attempted to force them apart with magic, but it was futile. The zodiac weren't even sure that they could take apart their hands at this point- it felt like they were stuck together with superglue and duct tape. Then Bill tried to plainly kill them first and threw a fireball at them, but a magical shield popped up and deflected it back at him.

At this point, the Zodiac could tell that Bill was full-on panicking, and he turned tail to flee.

But he didn't get far enough before the power of the Wheel caught up with him.

When he woke up, Dipper felt the worst he'd ever felt in his life. True, he hadn't lived very long, but still. His mouth felt as though someone had stuffed the Sahara in his mouth, he felt like he could eat a few horses, he thought that he could probably sleep for a week, everything ached as though he'd survived a rocket crash, and something felt… different about him.

When he'd finally mustered up the energy to open up his eyes, it was to the attic bedroom in the Mystery Shack. Considering that it had been destroyed when they made the Shacktron, he had no idea how he got here, but he figured he'd find out eventually. Maybe the magic had restored the Shack too, or he was in the afterlife, or something.

And then he saw the cat lounging on the nightstand. He was a large, fluffy, gray tabby, with blue eyes and a bored expression on his face. The cat also looked a bit translucent, and glowed an odd golden color. Before Dipper could think about how he knew the cat was a boy, he spoke.

The 'talking cat' thing didn't really phase Dipper, what with everything that had happened in the past three months. But what the cat said did throw him somewhat.

"Hi, Dipper. I guess you have no idea who I am, even though I know who you are. And that sentence will only raise more questions. I'm Azirial, and I'm your baya.

"You don't know what a baya is, of course. A baya is your spirit animal. And, for the most part, people can't see us. Except for us, as well as the rest of the zodiac, because what's one more reason for us to not be normal?

"Chances are you can see me because of the whole 'saving the world' deal. So chances are you can see other peoples' bayas, too. And we're stuck with each other. I can be away from you, but because of some ancient magical law I have to be at least three feet away from you at least every two weeks. So."

Dipper's head was spinning. In Gravity Falls, anything was possible. But spirit animals? He hadn't thought they were real. Which might be an insult to Azirial, he realized. And then he realized something- "Do you know where Mabel is?" he asked, the words grating against his throat and tongue.

Aziral flicked his tail towards the other side of the room, where Mabel was lying on her bed, sleeping. A glowing golden retriever was next to her bed, its (their?) head propped up on the mattress. Satisfied that his twin was safe and much too tired to stay awake for any longer than five minutes, Dipper put his head back on his pillow. He wanted to stay awake until Mabel woke up, but…

Dipper closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

May Pines was helping her friend Emily get up when they noticed the glowing animals staring at them. They stared back. In front of the group of five sword-bearing teens were an otter, a hummingbird, a golden eagle, a prairie dog, and a lion.

May had no idea how a lion or prairie dog got here, or why they were glowing, or why they didn't look entirely solid, but she was really worn out from everything, and she just wanted to take a shower, and then nap. But before she could raise her sword or flee, the hummingbird, apparently not wanting her to go, piped up.

"Hey! Wait!" she cried. Her voice was really high, but May couldn't tell if it was from nerves, or if that was just her voice. She paused. If she could trudge back, that would be better than running. May lowered her sword and asked, "Why do you want us to wait?" It came out more snappy than 'I'm-done-with-today' than she would've liked, but at this point she wasn't sure she cared.

"Because the fact that you can see us is really cool," the otter explained excitedly, "And we need to figure out how you're seeing us and what we are and we should probably do this inside, right? I mean you guys look tired, so…"

Jason looked at the lion. "Yeah, I would rather go inside so I can collapse, but how is, you know, a lion going to fit inside a living room plus the rest of us?"

"I'll fit, don't worry," the lion said.

Five Minutes Later

The lion had indeed fit in the Watsons' living room, though when Mrs Watson came down to give them snacks, she looked a bit confused as to why they were sitting the way they did. Normally they just spread out and chillaxed, but this time they had to kind of Tetris themselves so that all of them could fit in the relatively small space.

"So," the hummingbird said, "I'm just going to rip off the band-aid and say that we're you're spirit animals. We would all prefer it if you call us 'baya', though, so. Now, we'll give you our names, you won't give us yours to save time, and we'll explain more. I am Jenny."

"I'm Katie," introduced the otter.

"You can call me Susie," said the prairie dog.

"The name's Arrow, don't laugh, the name of another baya is 'Azirial', that's worse, and Arrow's a cool name," said the eagle.

Finally, the lion introduced himself, "My name is Arthur."

After Arthur had told everyone his name, Katie rushed into an explanation. "Okay, so, we're supposed to be kind of invisible, because we exist in between the Mindscape and reality, and we can go into the Mindscape but not reality for some reason, but! You can see us!

"My guess is that for some reason you absorbed magic during the ritual thing, so now you can see into the Mindscape- oh, and we can see into reality, yeah!- so you can see us!

"Anyway, because of an old magic law, we can't be more than three feet away from you for more than two weeks. If we're in three feet of you, then the timer is at two weeks, but once we're out of that zone, the timer counts down, and when it reaches zero, we're teleported to you!

"I hope I wasn't speaking too fast, but hopefully you get what I was trying to say." Katie jumped off the coffee table and Jenny flew to the top of the cheese ball bucket so people would actually see her.

"Since I seem to be the one responsible for all team building activities, I guess I'm the one that has to start with who's paired to who. May, I'm with you." Jenny flew over to May and sat on her head. "Arthur, you're next."

Arthur walked over to Matt. Katie was with Emily, Arrow was with Jason, and Susie was with Rachel. Matt yawned. "I dunno about you guys, but I'm heading to bed." Everyone hummed in agreement and went to get some sleep.

**This is an end note, that I'm also writing because I feel like I should. Also to tell you that Hanukkah is not Jewish Christmas, just really fun and in the same time period. It's a minor holiday, people. **


	2. I Can't Believe This

**A/N: Yeah... sorry. Because of the time it takes for me to write coherently, chapters are going to be really short, but hopefully more frequent, due to the fact that I have more free time and I'm not making myself write lobg chapters.  
**

* * *

May was really starting to wonder how she got here. Was this all a dream? It felt like one. If she had a time machine and went back to before this all happened, then told her past self about what happened to her, than she'd laugh in her face.

May thought back to how this all happened, trying to figure out how she went from a careless summer vacation to using magic swords to save the world from a giant sea serpent bent on world domination.

She could trace the outline of events easily enough- she and Emily had met Jason, Matt, and Rachel at a diner, where they went exploring and discovered the swords and some woman had told them the whole prophecy thing.

Then they'd had a bunch of wacky magical adventures, May bleached and dyed her hair, met the bad guy, and killed him in properly epic fashion with something that might've amounted to the power of friendship, but still.

And now she was here, with a sword that had vague powers that had something to do with flowers and vines but was still cool, and her spirit animal that was apparently a hummingbird named Jenny looking at her curiously.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"What makes you think that something's the matter?" Jenny replied.

"You're looking at me funny."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are, so spill."

"Nothing's wrong!"

May sighed. "Can you at least tell me what's on your _mind_?"

Jenny blew out of her nose and ruffled her feathers. "I was thinking about how weird it is that you can see me. And that we have no idea how this works. I mean, I thought that we could just straight up read each other's minds, but I guess not, huh?"

May nodded. "I have no idea what it was like for you. I know you could see into reality and stuff, but not much else."

"I mean…that's still what's happening. All it really is for us is like… Well, the Mindscape is like another reality superimposed onto yours. So baya just appear by their people when they're born and we just follow you guys around because it's the most interesting thing to do."

May _hmmed_ softly. "I guess it is kind of weird that there's a talking hummingbird on top of my magic sword now. Another thing to keep me up at night."

Jenny rolled her eyes. "You should go to sleep."

May sighed, but went to sleep.


	3. The Other Pineses

Dipper woke up again. This time, his head was clearer, and he felt considerably more like a human being who could accomplish basic tasks. Also, Azirial was still there.

Said cat was laying next to him, blinking up at him slowly. "I guess you're still here," Dipper said. "And you can still see me," Azirial replied, nodding as he stood up and stretched.

Dipper looked over towards his sister and saw that she was close-ish to waking up. He also noticed that, unlike Azirial, the dog wasn't glowing gold, but hot pink.

After a couple of minutes, Mabel stirred a bit, groaning. Her eyes slowly blinked open, and the dog's head lifted towards her. When she saw Dipper, she grinned. "Bro! You're up!" Then her landed her eyes on Azirial. Mabel gasped in excitement. "And you have a baya!"

The dog baya that was presumably Mabel's looked up from their place at her bed. The dog grinned (well, as best a dog could grin). "Oh! Hi! I'm Lilyana! Or Lily for short."

Dipper grinned. He wasn't sure what he was expecting- though he rarely did these days- but in hindsight, it was pretty obvious.

After Azirial introduced himself, Mabel decided that food was in order, so, after adjusting to standing after having laid down so long, they walked down to the kitchen.

Just as Mabel had managed to find some cereal and probably-not-spoiled milk, Stan walked in, now with a glowing snake pretending to be a necklace.

Once Stan noticed Dipper and Mabel, he smiled. "Hey kids," he said.

The snake around his neck lifted their head. "I'm Ada," she said, and before any of them could say anything else, Ford walked in, and his new animal accessory was an owl on his head who was, you guessed it, glowing.

Upon seeing each other, they tensed up a bit. Ford cleared his throat. Stan Looked at Ford. Mabel smiled, and in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, said, "I found some cereal, and this milk doesn't look spoiled!"

Apparently it worked, because both Stan and Ford turned to look at the younger twins.

Ford cleared his throat again. "Well. I suppose I could eat."

"Well, I know I'm starving!"

Mabel poured four bowls of cereal- there ended up not being enough, so they all ended up with three-quarters a bowl instead of a full bowl.

The owl on top of Ford's head jumped off, and introduced itself. "I'm Edmund."

The rest of the baya introduced themselves. After that, they all stopped talking as the Pines family devoured their cereal.


End file.
